It is common knowledge that Dada lives for ever. In 2016, the year in which is celebrated the Dada centenary, this phrase is everywhere, an indispensable element in the celebrating ritual that the contemporary art world pays to the founding fathers from the Cabaret Voltaire. However, we wanted to verify and we checked the validity of this assertion for the younger generation of artists, namely the students and the alumni of the Photography and Dynamic Image of the Bucharest University of the Arts. They convinced us: yes, it’s true, Dada did not die in 1918 in Zurich, it’s still very present in the younger artists’ creation.

The explanation? Although one speaks often about Dadaism, Dada is not an „ism” like all the other „isms”, it is not a style, whose formal characteristics could be accurately described, but a movement. It is even more, a state of mind!

In spite of the anniversary, the resulting exhibition is conceived not quite as a homage, but as an investigation, which tries to put into light the extensions of Dada spirit affecting the youngest generation of Romanian artists. This exhibition does not want to achieve a certain formal unity, which would have been contrary to the Dada spirit, but to express Dada’s persistence and relevance at the conceptual level. Therefore, the works present in the show are very different from one another but they all share, from the seemingly simple pinhole to the very sophisticated video, the experimental attitude that was so typical of Tzara and other Dadas.

On the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image:

The Department of Photography and Dynamic Image

Address those who wish to develop their skills in photography and filmmaking in an artistic environment. Centred on the making and understanding of images, the Master – Photography and Time Based Arts program offers students both the intensive focus of an arts curriculum while demanding a broad grounding in the liberal arts.

“The Department of Photography and Dynamic Image was founded in 1995. During its 20 years of existence, this department has shaped a formative endeavour centred on multi-disciplinary and conceptual dialogue. Synchronous with a shift of visual paradigm, the onset of this department in Bucharest contributed to the consolidation of photography, video art and multimedia artistic status in Romania.” – Text by Iosif Király